iTunes 11: No more album art preview for selected track??? :(

Apple knows what's best for us!

If you go to view > show view options there is a tick box to switch artwork on and off.

Apple you need to get your stuff straight, everytime you "upgrade" itunes gets worse, you should have been done around version 7. I think this has become nothing more than busy work for you all. When your customers complain about the changes you should fix what (you) have broke. If a customer is happy with a version of your product and enjoys your product then why not let them keep that version instead of forcing a version on them they do not like, food for thought. You should make it so your computer ask "would like to upgrade or are you happy with the current version, then don't worry about updating if you are happy." A happy customer is a good customer, first rule of business, write it down.

EoinTraynor wrote:
<<If you go to view > show view options there is a tick box to switch artwork on and off.>>

That does work, but if you have a lot of album art, you are literally blowing up your LIST VIEW and making it completely non-functional. Not the fix people are seeking.

Uncle Daddy - that's a great point. You said: <<A happy customer is a good customer, first rule of business, write it down.>>

😉

I'm just going to copy someone else that echoed my sintements exactly.

"Since iOS 7 now requires iTunes 11, will you please, please, please bring back the cover art preview at the bottom left corner when in the "Songs" view? This is ridiculous. Now there is no way for us to see the image in its true size, 600 x 600 pixels (like we used to be able to do by simply clicking on that left-corner image) unless we "Get Info", artwork tab, right click, copy, and paste into Paint to verify?! How is this program a step up from before? Instead you want to restrict our freedom and the way we want to enjoy our music libraries or just change it all and assume that everyone will love it. Why can't you make it optional?! You already had it as an option before, just throw it in there again to make everyone happy. The people that want it to look like it does now, you know, boring, with no cover art preview when you click on a song, fine. They can turn it off. It would be so easy and we would be so happy! I really am so depressed not having this feature. I don't always want to play a song just to see the artwork or go to "Get Info" every time?! Seriously? That's how it has to be? C'mon now."

Just one more time for the record, one more vote, one more notch on the belt, YES APPLE another person who wants the Artwork for a track displayed like it was on versions previous to version 11.

I repeat, I want to see the full piece of artwork, or at least a sizable preview of it, for the selected/highlighted track. You can put it back in just the way it used to be, in a small closeable sidebar/drawer in the lower left corner of the application. The way you had it implemented before was just fine! Bring back the artwork!!

This really was a useful feature and without it, the software (iTunes) makes it significantly harder to manage my music library and to check that library for completeness.

Why is this so important???? Pay attention to the details here: I am a DJ and I have used iTunes for years to manage my library and sort it into playlists before loading the songs into my DJ'ing software. I used iTunes cause it made it very easy to check every song to see if there was a piece of Artwork FOR EACH SONG, ATTACHED TO EACH SONG'S ID TAG... As a DJ, many of the tracks I listen to, are individual singles! Therefore in a mix collection of 20 tracks, every one of those tracks will have it's own custom piece of artwork, which needs to be checked after downloading a new batch of songs.

The old Artwork view would allow me to just highlight each song (did not have to play it either, just highlight or click on the song title) and the Artwork attached to that Track would pop up in the box on the lower left corner. This is very useful for checking out the tracks quickly after downloading, quickly adding artwork without needing to use Get Info, and verifying that the Track already has it's correct Artwork, which is usually custom Artwork made just for that particular version or release or remix of that song.

The new way to check Artwork on a list of songs is to Get Info for every single track, that is grossly inefficient and also it gets in the way of just working with my music. To further complicate the issue, with the new way of handling artwork, iTunes trys to display Artwork for an Album for ALL the tracks on that Album even if the ID tag or music file itself DOES NOT HAVE THE ARTWORK ATTACHED, which immediately leads to a huge problem, as you don't know which songs in that album of say 20 Beatles songs, actually has the artwork attached, which one day you could move a track, just one, onto a playlist, and BAM, a grey box where your artwork should be on the ipod, you just found the one track in that entire album that never had the artwork attached to the actual file. Even if you set the view mode to LIST and then have the artwork forced to 'always display', iTunes now tries to stick the artwork on the actual row for the song in the playlist, now screwing up all your playlist column spacing and chewing up space... Plus it tries to group the artwork by album, again you can't tell which songs in the album have their artowrk since if ONE song from 20 in that album has artwork, then it appears that all 20 tracks have their art... and THEY DON'T!!!

So you see this artwork display "improvement" that iTunes 11 brings actually cripples iTunes by making it impossible to accurately and confidently organize and manage your track's artwork with confidence and consistancy.

Please bring back the old way of viewing artwork in the lower left corner of iTunes by just clicking on the song once. Getting info or every song to check artwork is unacceptable... Needing to play every song to check the artwork is unacceptable for a multitude of reasons. And grouping art together by album is unacceptable as a method for displaying the art, because it gives a false impression of a complete and accurate acount of your library's artwork status, by making you think you have all of the artwork when you might truthfully only have 1 track with the artwork for said album.

Apple bring back the old way managing artwork... Don't let the loss of Steve at the helm of the company cause you to lose vision of what made you great.... software and hardare elegantly designed together to tap into the center of our creative energy, our hearts... and to provide the right features such that said software never ever hinders the creative flow...

The crappy user interface of iTunes has inspired me (and I hope hundreds of others) to learn how to code so that we can write our own database app for managing our own music. I used to be proud to own an apple product. The frustration of dealing with iTunes has eaten that pride.

Fix this or give us a solution im soo sick of this crap. I have a ton of songs and i pay enough for your service. Do us all a favor and work on it!!! It's been over 2 years.

I agree with the majority of complaints in this post. I thought upon the release of iTunes 11 the exclusion of "preview selected album art" along with the ability to resize album art in "albums" view and to change the background from eyestrain-inducing white to pleasant grey were simply oversights that would be included in a later update. I am now at my wits end and becoming fed up with iTunes and Apple's disregard for the voices crying out in unison for these features to be restored. They were part of what made iTunes the best media player. Now it is just an unelegant eyestrain.

Bring back preview selected album art!

Bring back grey background!

Bring back resize album art size!

Beatport just released their new library management software call Beatport Pro... This is due to all the complaints about iTunes 11 and its poor or confusing orgranization... Unfortunately I'm not on Mountain Lion so I cannot demo the software... But Apple needs to get up and motivated if they don't want people leaving their app and music store by using another company's app to manage their music library....

http://www.djtechtools.com/2014/04/14/first-look-beatport-pro-for-mac-dj-library -management-software/

http://pro.beatport.com/

Vince

Wow, Beatport Pro is SO much easier on the eyes than iTunes 11. Please, Apple, PLEASE gives us back the option for a gray background!

To all reading this, I totally agree with your disappointment. Album art is a MAJOR part of the music experience. Even the not so great art. Steve knew this. Sorry to resort to that, but I doubt he'd have allowed removal of the lower left art panel. So brain dead a move.

PLEASE EVERYONE IF Y0U REALLY MISS THE ALBUM ARTWORK IN THE LOWER LEFT CORNER:

Click Contact Us in the lower right corner of these pages and click Product Feedback > iTunes and write Apple about your feelings and the importance of art and music and what the loss of the lower left artwork panel in iTunes means to you. I just did. They supposedly do listen. Who knows maybe if enough of us write, they'll return this beloved feature to us. Here's what I wrote FYI:

"I often have different graphics for each song in an album. Like for lyrics I create in a 500 x 500 px image and place the lyrics in it and make a jpg and use it for the corresponding songs art since on an iPhone we don't have COMMENTS like we do in the desktop iTunes app > Info > Comments.

Even for albums where I only use the 1 album graphic, I WANT to see it! Art is a very important part of the music user experience having been in the record biz for 30 yrs

I'm stunned you'd lop off graphics from view. I hate to say this, but Steve would never have done this. This my friends is what Microsoft does.

Please return graphics back to us in the lower left corner. THIS IS URGENT!"

Hi guys,

I don't expect Apple to bring back our beloved feature, so I wrote a little Mac app "iTunesArtwork" (or iTA) that displays the artwork of the currently selected (not playing) track in a window :-)

The window stays on top and it stores its position when you quit the app.

So start it, place/resize it to fit in the lower left corner of iTunes (or wherever you want), quit once to store the position and start it again.

You can configure if iTunes should start together with iTA, quit with iTunes, or if iTunes should quit if you close iTA.

Please have a look at the "About" text, where you will also find some ideas for improvements.

So far it's tested only under 10.6.8 with iTunes 11.2.2.

Please let me know if it works for you,

Frank

p.s. Here's the source. It's an Applescript Objective-C app. Feel free to change it, but don't sell it (or ask me first ;-)

Thank you! It works like a charm:) iTunes 12.0.1

THANK YOU Macfrankly - your app works really well !! It's the only workaround I know of regarding iTunes 11 /12's obtuse art management. I just leave it at the bottom left corner of my screen.

Appreciate your effort !